Services

I offer the following services:

  • Parent coaching for individuals and couples.

  • Group training.

  • Public speaking.

  • Professional consultations and supervision.

Parent COaching Overview

My coaching services are provided through two distinct approaches. I will summarize them here and expand on them below.

  • Intensive interventions are concentrated blocks of coach-led exercises and training sessions. Intensive interventions are used to establish a foundation for ongoing conversational coaching, or to address new challenges/obstacles that have arisen since coaching began. During intensive sessions, we work towards coach-directed goals.

  • Conversational coaching is still coach-led but the desired outcome of the conversation is chosen by the client, and the majority of the time is spent exploring and connecting what the client knows rather than disseminating what the coach knows.

Prior to the pandemic, I traveled for in-home intensives which, due to the logistics of travel, were a minimum of three consecutive 8-hour days. Given the constraints of the current COVID-19 pandemic, I have adapted my in-home intensive intervention to a virtual format. Working virtually provides a marginally lower fidelity interaction and efficiency compared to the face-to-face interaction of an in-home intervention, but it also provides more flexibility in pacing and eliminates travel costs. With 17 years of experience working remotely with individuals and teams of all sizes through a multitude of communication mediums, I am fully prepared to provide comprehensive coaching support via Zoom. 

With virtual intensive sessions, I have found 2-hour sessions work best. Working over Zoom is fatiguing in a way that face-to-face is not, and 2-hours seems to be the sweet spot for getting into intensive work over a video call. We can do longer sessions if your logistics require it, but plan on taking a break in the middle to tend to biological needs.

Intensive Coaching

Here is a list of the most common elements of intensive work. These can happen in an order different from what is listed here. 

  1. We explore the parent’s own family of origin through a guided conversation about their relationships with their parents during childhood, what they did to get help and how they were supported as a child during difficult circumstances, how they adapted to cope and survive those experiences. The parent gains awareness, insight, and understanding of how those experiences shaped their own development and how they influence the present.

  2. We build a foundational theoretical framework for seeing and understanding the roots, causes, and remedies specific to the parent’s and child’s circumstances. This is accomplished through training, dialog, and homework that is completed by the parent before each session. The specific content included is tailored to the family’s needs.

  3. We identify the child’s relational needs, identifying first steps for building connection, felt-safety, trust, and regulation, using role-play to practice new connected engagement strategies.

  4. We identify the child’s physiological and ecological needs, identifying first steps towards how to meet them.

  5. We assess and evaluate the most challenging behaviors. Parents gain awareness, insight, and understanding of how their current responses contribute to those challenges and how to change their responses to meet the needs of their child. Role-play may be used to practice these new responses and set a baseline expectation for the initial awkwardness that always accompanies learning new skills. We also brainstorm possible responses by the child to these changes and explore how to navigate them.

  6. We assess and evaluate potentially challenging dynamics between the parents, identifying any initial accommodations that may be needed during ongoing coaching activities.

  7. We explore the parent’s emotional landscape and use it as a guide to discovering their unmet needs that lead to exhaustion, depletion, and difficulty remaining connected. We brainstorm solutions to meet those needs and identify the first steps for implementation.

  8. I also customize intensive time to the needs of the client. Most often, this involves digging into circumstances unique to that family, or returning to give more time to challenges identified in the previous exercises which need more time and attention.

Conversational Coaching

While parents nearly always find immediate benefit from the foundation-laying intensive coaching, conversational coaching is where the majority of change occurs. Intensive sessions center on what I can teach you. Conversational coaching relies on the knowledge you know better than I ever will: yourself, your kids, and your circumstances. Weekly coaching conversations provide regular and reliable ongoing support to navigate unanticipated challenges, obstacles, and issues - support that keeps parents in the game and moving forward. 

There are two types of these conversations, each with a specific format. 

Compass-Heading Sessions are 90-minute conversations that provide parents with clarity regarding the challenges they are experiencing, the direction to head, and the next steps to pursuing their desired outcomes. 

  1. We start with a check-in where parents fill me in on whatever has happened since our last conversation that they want me to know.

  2. We establish the desired outcome for the conversation, negotiating the scope to make sure it fits within the available time.

  3. By asking the right questions, we explore the issue with the parent providing the bulk of the awareness and knowledge. While I have extensive knowledge and experience, every parent knows their child and themself better than I ever will. Asking the right questions to brings the needed information into awareness where the dots can be connected and the path forward becomes clear.

  4. We create a list of SMART action items to pursue the desired outcome.
    S – Simple
    M – Measurable
    A – Attainable
    R – Relevant
    T – Time-Based

Conversational Coaching is an iterative process, and we reach our destination in a series of steps, not one giant leap. When we choose action items, it is with the expectation that those actions will bring the hoped-for results. When the results do not match our plans, I do not consider this failure. I see it as more data to feed the process. Sometimes, the insight we need to make progress is only discovered when we try something that doesn’t work as expected.

Course-Correction Sessions are 30-minute conversations to identify whether we are still going in the right direction or need to adjust our compass heading. In these conversations, we review the action items from the previous meeting, discuss how they are going, brainstorm any obstacles and issues, identify needed heading changes, and adjust action items as needed. These sessions ensure parents follow through on actions and do not get discouraged when actions don’t immediately yield the hoped-for results.

As we go, we evaluate our progress and current needs. The frequency of and spacing of conversational coaching sessions can be increased or decreased depending on the current circumstances and level of support needed. If we discover that an additional intensive session would be valuable, we can add it when needed. Everything is pay-as-you-go and quantity and pacing are under your control.